A newly uncovered vulnerability in Windows XP has Microsoft scrambling to work up a patch. In the meantime, however, attacks based on the security hole in Windows XP’s Help and Support Center are multiplying quickly, topping 10,000 earlier this week, according to the company.
eSecurity Planet takes a look at the threat, and the public release of information last month by Google researcher Tavis Ormandy that some say may have hastened the danger.
It’s been three weeks since Microsoft announced it was working on a patch for a nasty zero-day security hole in Windows XP’s Help and Support Center that was released on a security website by a Google security researcher.
Now, according to a post at Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Malware Protection Center blog on June 30, the exploit that Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) researcher Tavis Ormandy unleashed in the wild has resulted in more than 10,000 attacks in the real world.